IDL Provides Improved Visualization and Application Development for Naval Air Warfare Center

RSI's Professional Services Group helps plan and develop IDLRAP application

The Naval Air Warfare Center - Weapons Division (NAWCWD) of the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) supports Department of Defense and foreign military branches by monitoring and providing reports on operations test data that is gathered from a variety of platforms and sensors. The data is analyzed and distributed by the Pacific Ranges and Facilities Department at the Naval Air Warfare Center (NAWCWD), located in Point Mugu, California. Using IDL, the NAWCWD has built an integrated development environment, called IDLRAP, that allows the user to interactively analyze data and more quickly develop applications, and has thus revolutionized the way traditional post-mission data products are processed and distributed to customers.

Image shows the data display and file management widgets in IDLRAP. The graphics display shows the change in position of the measuring device over time during a flight test, using Global Positioning System (GPS) data. Here the user has selected a range of data (highlighted in gray) that contains "bad data," which will be interpolated to smooth out the noise.

Seven Goals Prompt IDLRAP Development

Head of Data Products Bill Karr and his team had seven specific goals in mind when they developed IDLRAP. First, they wanted to satisfy customer requirements in a timely and cost-efficient manner by developing "production ready" applications more quickly and efficiently. Second, they needed to reduce the overall development and maintenance costs associated with application software over its lifecycle. Third, they wanted to leverage the current COTS technologies in their production environment. Fourth, they wanted to migrate from a FORTRAN-based legacy system to one that supports object-oriented (OO) methodologies.

"We had a 'skills mix' issue within our organization," explained Karr. "We needed a powerful tool that was easy to learn and integrate, and was somewhat forgiving. Such a tool would enable us to utilize the talents of existing team members as well as get them up to speed quickly while they learned to use the new tools and methodologies associated with OO programming."

Fifth, the team wanted a package from a company that provided the highest quality training and support. Six, they needed to support the NAVAIR organization commonality objectives, such as providing a library of "common" routines that could be shared among various entities within the organization. Lastly, they wanted to build an application that could one day be easily migrated to the Internet.

IDLRAP Enhances Current System Architecture

IDLRAP enables the NAWCWD to take full advantage of its current architecture, the Range Data System (RDS) architecture, which is implemented at the Sea Range (Point Mugu). RDS is a distributed, PC-based networked environment integrating COTS tools and solutions. RDS enables the data analyst to access data within seconds after it is collected in a real-time mode from both instrumentation sensors like RADAR and GPS, as well as Telemetry sources such as ships, aircraft, missiles, and various other control systems. Data types include TSPI (Time, Space, Position, Information data) and real-time telemetry data. Data sets vary in size from a few kilobytes to several hundred megabytes.

"Advancements in COTS hardware and software technologies have enabled our data analysts to interactively process and visually analyze data samples collected from various Range instrumentation sensors and platforms on the desktop. What we wanted to do with IDLRAP was to enhance those traditional processing and analysis methods," said Karr.

"The basic concept of operation within the IDLRAP application is straightforward," he continued. "IDLRAP reads data, processes the data interactively via a graphical, visual interface that is in accordance with customer requirements using methods, techniques and algorithms generally accepted in the data reduction environment, and generates a final data product. The data analyst has a variety of functionality, such as folders, tabs, dialog boxes, windows, and buttons available that offer options to process and generate final data products."

IDLRAP is being implemented at the NAWCWD on a PC-based platform running Microsoft Windows NT. The application is extensible and provides the application developer with an integrated development environment. Support for external library access is provided within the IDL framework and is available via the "Linkimage" and "Link External" capability. Routines common to the data reduction process, such as filters, transformations, and refraction correction, can be external to the IDL environment if it is required or is desirable. "Essentially, a 'C' wrapper is written around the external routines that work with IDL interfaces," explained Karr. "This feature enables the us to support organizational commonalty objectives by linking to a library of routines common to the data reduction environment."

The users of IDLRAP include data analysts, mathematicians, computer scientists, systems analysts, computer programmers, scientists and engineers. With IDLRAP, the user can now perform a variety of interactive functions, including selective editing, merging, best source selection, filtering, interpolation, refraction and bore-sight corrections to raw data samples, and generate more sophisticated final customer data products.

RSI's Professional Services Group Helps NAVAIR Achieve Goals

The development of IDLRAP, from requirements definition to a final delivered product, took approximately three months. "One of our core requirements for IDLRAP was a user-friendly interface. Our in-house developers are knowledgeable in the algorithms and processes unique to our business, but not in object-oriented methodologies and the IDL language. Therefore, we asked the RSI Services Group to help us develop the Graphical User Interface (GUI) while our NAWCWD team focused on the routines core to our business and the applications that generated 'final' customer data products."

"Research Systems' Services Group was able to demonstrate IDL in our environment, using our data. That exercise proved to our data analysts that IDL could do the job," said Karr.

"Our group also took part in RSI's training programs," continued Karr. "By completing all of the training offered by RSI - the Intro to Advanced courses, we will likely save an estimated six months of time," said Karr.

Integration of ION is Next Step in IDLRAP

IDLRAP is a work in progress, according to Karr. "The next step is to integrate RSI's ION tool into our production environment. ION will enable our customers to have direct access to their data products using web-based technology in a manner that is non-intrusive to their desktop. ION enables someone to use an ordinary browser to view data and data products that we generate; that keeps it very simple and straightforward for our customers."

"IDLRAP has given the data analyst more power at his immediate disposal, which was one of our primary goals at NAVAIR. In the past, it took significant time and effort to develop an application here at the NAWCWD. Now, the data analyst can more readily adapt to changing customer requirements. We still write code, but in those instances where we need to do something fast and direct, we now have the power and the tools on the desktop to do so," Karr continued.

"Although we have achieved our original goal, much work remains to be completed and integrated into the IDLRAP application, as we are trying to capture the best features and capabilities of our legacy tool and integrate them. Our legacy system represents a collection of more than twenty years of application libraries and routines that support the production team. The hard work and dedication of our team members will ensure successful transition to IDLRAP," Karr concluded.